Mixed bag of activity and incidents. Yesterday was Special Interest day organised by the arts society I belong to. It took the form of a taster session for the Pirates of Penzance which the Scottish Opera are performing locally. The only G&S I really enjoy for its spectacle and silliness is the Mikado, but as the Special Day was to be held at a little castle nearbye it was too good to refuse.
Why they call these overgrown houses castles up here I’ll never really understand. This one hasn’t even got a vestige of a moat; there’s a bit of castellation going on, and a turret or two, but it can hardly be said to have been fortified. Be that as it may, it’s a cosy, rather beautiful place and the opportunity to spend a day being entertained in it was something to look forward to. I wasn’t disappointed.
The talk was all in the Drawing Room, which has an extremely pretty, delicately decorated ceiling; walls hung with the usual huge family groups, portraits, and occasional bucolic scenes, and long windows which would have been letting in too much sunshine, grilling us all, but blinds were available; they have obviously had that problem in the past. The talk in the morning did a lot to overcome a belief that G&S were foolish to want to be taken seriously with the opera crowd. Even I started to appreciate Sullivan’s skill as a composer. They probably suffer from being performed so often by amateurs. Two covers had come to sing some of the more interesting bits and to demonstrate need for trained opera voices to make the best of the works. The musical director also pointed out their witty references to operatic conventions of the time.
The female lead cover is small boned and very slim and I really couldn’t work out where she kept the wind for all those colatura trills and runs inside such a tiny chest. She told me later it is all the the use of the rib cage. Wish I’d been sent to learn to sing when I was young!
In the afternoon a wardrobe master talked about creating the costumes, which again was more interesting than I had feared. Everything is authentically made and couldn’t be faulted in a gents outfitters or high class ladies boutique, carefully finished and embellished, real pockets, linings, buttons, hooks and eyes (never zips because they have to last over so many performances, and never velcro because of the horrid noise it makes, also, I feel, professional pride.) They even make the pirate costumes newly, as they would once have been good clothes (the pirates having once been gentlemen gone to the bad) Then they are dirtied up and torn. Must be heart-breaking for the cutters and seamstresses.
He had brought corsets to pass around. They weigh a ton, must be difficult enough for the singers, but I can only feel pain for the women who had to wear them every day.
For lunch we had a choice of the little tea room open to ordinary visitors daily, the lairds dining room and the lairds kitchen. I chose the kitchen which is modest, comfortable, and very suitable for my dream of an ideal home. Happily for me the covers and the music director also chose that room so a fortunate few got extra stories about operatic gaffs and canons that don’t fire and very, very last minute calls to go on instead of the stars.
So that was all good. I was irritated by a woman I know slightly telling me I looked ‘exhausted.’ Cat! Memo to self: never tell someone they look tired. It is really undermining, not to say insulting.
It has to be said that this is a tiring time of year up here, with white nights, very little dark. I wake at 3am and because it doesn’t matter I read, write, have coffee and so on. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle and if I don’t get a nap now and again I can feel washed out. Also there is the other joy of May and June: pollen. Sore eyes and swollen glands... I still deny looking washed out!
Nice bit of conversation today in Tesco at 7.30 am. The minister of one of the two Church of Scotland churches in town is nearly always shopping at that time of day. He used to buy books from me, is always friendly, and has never ever wanted to know if I’m a Christian (unlike another minister years ago). Today he was having an excited conversation with one of the bakers and they called me over to repeated it for me. The baker had had a vivid dream in the night; a frequent customer that he often chatted with died recently. Last night this good old fellow came to the baker in his dream to give him a tip for a race today, and was very emphatic about him placing a bet. Naturally the baker checked out the field - the horse is running! Very exciting. I hope I hear the outcome.
